To think women who say “I’m just one of the lads” secretly crave male approval?

[TheFluentCrow]

I always hear women saying this as though it’s a badge of honour. But isn’t it really just about wanting validation from men and distancing themselves from other women?

I’m autistic.

My female friends without exception are also autistic but the majority of my friends are male - because my interests are hobbies are typically male ones.

Am I not supposed to socialise with those I feel comfortable with? Is this yet another way I am doing life wrong?

I don't know why you associate female friendship with being girlie, spa days, putting fake anything on your body, talking about men while also complaining how terrible they are, gossiping and drama. I am genuinely bemused as it bears no relation to my life or that of anyone I know. No wonder you don't have any women friends if this is what you think of women. Apart from you, of course. You're not like other women 😆

My eldest DD (40 this year) wouldn't use the term like that. She was into hard core dance/Calvin Harris/Example and would travel around Europe to go to concerts and festivals. She's the only one out of her female friendship group who hasn't had children. Her partner (been together since 17 years old), hates that style of music and crowded events, he definitely doesn't do camping. My DD would go with a group of mainly male friends, all couple friends. Her partner trusted all of them and recognised that it's safer to be in their tent/company. She was described and self described as 'one of the lads'. She had a good mixed sex friendship group from primary school.

I love how people assume attractive women can only be friends with men if there’s a hidden sexual agenda (despite both sides often having partners or being married) but that doesn’t apply presumably to lesbian friends or those who are bisexual and may be finding us attractive too? Jeez, people can think about more than just how someone looks. It’s this shallow outlook which is part of the reason I don’t associate with many females. Women are the worst to each other and against each other. They blame a lot on men but women can be horrid, right from being little girls in primary school.

How many men would even be on a site like Mumsnet, posting stuff like this? They just get on with their lives! And women wonder why they’re not taken seriously - look at this thread alone! Let people be whatever they want and associate with whomever they want. No need for sympathy if you don’t have a gaggle of female friends. I don’t and I don’t feel I’m missing out at all. I’ve met women, I’ve had the chance of female friends but they have been nothing like me and I can’t be doing with the drama or conversations like this one.

I think this thread gives quite a good indication why a lot of women find other women difficult.....

The keenness to judge every single one of a group of imaginary unnamed women while calling them 'pathetic' 'desperate' 'pick me' 'odd' 'bootlicking' etc etc etc might just be giving a clue.

Absolutely not, no one’s saying people should only have same-gender friendships or that it’s wrong to feel more comfortable with men. It sounds like your friendships have formed naturally around shared interests, which is completely valid. My post was more about how the ‘one of the lads’ label is sometimes used performatively, not aimed at genuine, comfortable friendships like yours.

I agree- women who claim they dont get on with other women baffle me. Women make up 50% of the damn population. If you cannot get on with 50% of the population purely due to their gender then YOU are the issue.

I find women who say this utterly pathetic.

The only women who hate women are the ones who are weird if they hang out with men surely? What even is this weird thread and this "pick me" concept 😳 What women actively hate women, can you elaborate?

My DH is definitely not easygoing and gets frustrated by my laid back attitude 😂

One of the lads girls are always pick me girls. The ones that ar just friends with men are just that, friends and no need to proadcast it. Similarly 'nice guys'. Genuinely nice men do not need to point it out, it is just who they are.

This whole thread is reductionist? I actually can't believe someone started a thread like this and has so many people in agreement. Surely you're just friends with who you're friends with? In my 20s moat of my friends were male, then in my 30s most are female. I don't pick my friends based on their sex, but if we get along. Surely that's normal?

This is what I don’t understand, where are these women with agendas and what is it they are trying to do? I’ve never met any women like this in my adult life (school was different but it is for every one I think). Oh and love island I remember when I watched it years ago there was a lot of agendas 😂

But I honestly don’t know any in real life. It just sounds like made up bs designed to pit us against each other.

Seriously what happened to you for you to have such strong feelings about this? Read back what you wrote, you've got some major hate going on there 🤨

I know interesting men and interesting women. I know more boring men and more boring women. But that’s subjective.

I feel more at ease in a group of friendly men that I know, than a group of friendly women that I know. I think this is because there’s less of a judgemental vibe and also as a group I generally find them more interesting to talk. I’m not talking about close friends here. But in my experience, groups of women have limited topics of conversation during different life stages. It starts with boyfriends, progresses to weddings then ends with babies, kids and schools. I’m not massively interested in any of these topics despite having kids of my own (obv am concerned with my own kids but other ppl’s - no one cares as much as their parents) and find the length of time devoted to these topics draining. I totally understand the desire for advice and offloading, but it regularly turns to comparisons then competition, and the stress and significance assigned to relatively minor things (in my opinion).

Every single time I go out with groups of women, school is obviously a hot topic, but it staggers me that almost a decade on we are still sharing birth stories and pregnancy analysis - every time we meet up!

Men generally talk about other things - obv bc they were never pregnant and generally leave the majority of child rearing and mental load to their partners - I get that and am not making excuses for them, but sometimes it’s nice to switch off mum-mode and onto you-mode and discuss wider topics - politics, art, entertainment, global affairs etc.

The men I mix with tend to take themselves less seriously and are fun to chat to whereas I feel I have to mask with a lot of other women and hide the boredom or try to engage like them in order to fit in. I still don’t feel like I do and have imposter syndrome. But I’ve never felt like ‘one of the girls’ and am on the long wait for an ND diagnosis, so it could be that.

Speaking from experience (I'm in my late sixites) I have genuinely found women who emphasise their "one of the lads" credentials are indeed seeking male validation or wanting to form a relationship with one of that group. That's just my observation from numerous different scenarios and over a considerable number of years.

Have you been in a school playground, because I can assure you it is very much like this. Give me school dads any day!

Interesting, isn’t it? 😉

I don’t hate anyone - I’m critiquing a pattern, not attacking individuals. It’s possible to have strong opinions about cultural behaviours without it coming from personal bitterness. That’s the whole point of AIBU, isn’t it?

I would draw a hard distinction between two types of women in this category.

Some women authentically gravitate towards typically male hobbies and interests (football/biking/golf) and prefer to talk about these things and build their social life around things where they will be on common ground. I know a woman who is a life-long, die-hard football supporter and spends every other weekend travelling to Manchester to support her favourite club. She is passionate about it and doesn't get that level of passion from 99.9% of the women she knows so a lot of her social life revolves around being with men. She's also happily married (to a man) with two kids and has good female friendships.

But there is definitely a category of "one of the blokes" girls who are basically "cool girls". I've known dozens of women like this over the years (and I've been guilty of this a bit myself in low periods) and it invariably is associated with low self-esteem and the belief that you won't be accepted and loved if you say what you actually want, so you go along with things which you think will make your male company "happy" in a superficial way: drinking lots of pints at the pub, cheering along with the football, dissing "girly" pursuits and making a clown of yourself in order to be accepted (and ultimately in the false belief that you're more likely to find a boyfriend by acting like this).

I cringe when any woman describes herself as "one of the lads". It tends to make me think they are in the latter category and I feel slightly embarrassed for them. If you genuinely are "one of the lads" you wouldn't need to advertise it.

Who are all these people stating they are one of the lads, I have honestly never encountered this. My SIL probably fits in this category, but has never uttered these words. What is pick me, it sounds like some social media crap. You sound very bitter tbh, do you have any good platonic male friends?

If you don't like the conversations on MN, then rather than come on to threads to sneer at women having them, why not pop to reddit and see what all the lovely men are saying? I can tell you for sure that the male population isn't just living their lives. They've plenty to say.

I have a mix of friends, but numbers-wise there are more men.
I dont consider myself "one of the lads" because I'm not Sarah Cox.

I work in a male dominated industry, and I have hobbies that are male dominated. I'm also gay so have no sexual interest in men whatsoever, so that has never been an issue, and certainly not a "pick me" one.

Generally I find men easier to get on with, largely because when we talk its about work, or our hobbies, and there is a focus.

@Whynotjustengageyourbrain

Who are all these people stating they are one of the lads, I have honestly never encountered this.

I've known masses of women do this. It's definitely a thing.

So I'm a full on girly girl, but have lots of male friends, what does that make me? I would never watch football.

I’m torn on this because what you’re describing used to be me and I do cringe a bit looking back but I think it’s more complex than that.

I was diagnosed autistic as an adult and my whole life I’ve struggled with maintaining friendships. I have always had a sense that I’m not understanding social rules and even though I can feel people’s reactions to me shift, I cannot tell why.

Genuinely, this does seem to happen more with women. For a long time I would have said that in a judgemental way (women are more bitchy etc.) but I was being unfair.

I read a theory that when it comes to emotional complexity / intelligence / sophistication of social rules, autistic men tend to be at the bottom. Then above that you have neurotypical men tied with autistic women and then above them all neurotypical women.

I would agree with this. I don’t think it was ever that the women I met were bitchy or nasty. I think it’s that the social rules were more complex and it was easier to accidentally offend or do something I wasn’t “supposed” to do.

I sometimes had mixed friendship groups but for some reason they’d involve men’s and women doing things separately. The women would go and get their nails done and the men would play board games. I’d join the men because my interests aligned more with theirs. Then over time the women would dislike me and I felt it was unfair.

Looking back, had I sometimes gone to get my nails done and made an effort to show I wanted to be friends then they likely wouldn’t have cared that I sometimes wanted to do the male activity. It genuinely didn’t occur to me that the reason they disliked me was because I didn’t make an effort. I thought they disliked me and judged me because I didn’t share their interests. I resented that the group was even split in this way.

I had a bit of an epiphany when I realised that the men I thought were friends would get drunk and make flirty comments. They invited me to stuff like I was one of them but they didn’t care about me as a person in the way they did their male friends. I also found that when I put on weight a lot of them became less interested in being my friend which didn’t really align with my idea that we just liked each other as people.

I have done a bit of a 180 in that I no longer feel interested in pursuing friendships with men. I do think the very few times I have had female friendships they were more meaningful. I want to find friends who are women but even now - slightly more enlightened - I do find it harder.

With men, if I chatted for a bit and shared their interest I’d very quickly become part of the group that got invited next time.

With women it feels like even when we’ve spent a lot of time together and know a lot about each other, they see still me as an acquaintance and I struggle to get to a point where I’m in a friendship group or even someone who they see as a friend. When I do meet a woman and we click, often they’ll become distant and I don’t know why. Or I’ll think we’re closer than we are.

I actually think men can be just as bitchy and gossipy but with women the etiquette and friendship rules are more subtle and intricate.

So yes I have been a “pick me” in the sense that out of insecurity I have neglected to make an effort with women and have unfairly made assumptions about them. I can see why it came across like I thought I was better than them. But it genuinely wasn’t about getting male validation and trying to shag everyone’s husbands.